Here, in the third blogpost from the exhibition, we spoke to a representative from the technical side of the industry. ViewCast provides platforms for live video streaming to mobile phones, the Internet and TV channels.

Peter Still, Managing Director, ViewCast UK

Mr Still highlighted different areas in the market that his company is attempting to fill. One major point he underlined was journalists’ need to be able to broadcast clearly and smoothly from the field. He said that at times using satellite connectivity results in poor quality audio and video and outlined the kind of measures and developments that his company is taking to combat these hiccoughs.

Portability is important, but you do not want to compromise on audio-visual quality. (Incidentally, as he was saying this, we were confronting that exact quandary: the BlackBerry providing immediacy but a loss of capturing quality.) Mr Still also remarked that developments by his company were aiding reporters in the field to stream their footage live directly onto the Internet.

Moreover, Mr Still pointed out the need for this sort of reliable, portable video servers because of the increase of correspondents themselves leading the news coverage from a live location, as opposed to an anchor in the studio.

Matt Frei regularly performs this role for the BBC:

Finally, although not as bad as the video quality problems we encountered during the last blogpost from the Expo, there were still some audio issues with the interview, owing to the limitations of the BlackBerry recording device.